Network-based messaging systems, such as voice-mail systems have been replacing stand-alone answering machines that connect to an individual subscriber telephone. Such network-based messaging systems offer many advantages over stand-alone answering machines, including advanced voice-mail features such as remote message retrieval and user convenience. However, one advantage of the stand-alone answering machines over network-based messaging is that the user can monitor an incoming message in real-time and determine if they want to intercept the message and engage in a conversation with the caller (i.e., call screening). Conventional network-based messaging systems have not offered a call screening feature.
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